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Science 23 February 2001:
Vol. 291. no. 5508, pp. 1506 - 1507
DOI: 10.1126/science.291.5508.1506
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Perspectives

NEUROSCIENCE:
Drums Keep Pounding a Rhythm in the Brain

Michael P. Stryker

How does the visual cortex of the primate brain manage to focus attention on one interesting object while ignoring all of the other objects in the field of view? According to Stryker in his Perspective, new findings in monkeys (Fries et al.) demonstrate that neurons in the V4 region of the visual cortex that are activated by the "attended" stimulus show remarkable synchronization of their electrical discharges in the gamma frequency range (35 to 90 Hz), whereas neurons activated by distracting stimuli do not.

The author is in the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94943-0444, USA. E-mail: stryker{at}phy.ucsf.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)